Sparks & Stones
by levina-c
Summary: How did the Bending Brothers learn that they could bend? A story of how two little street rats discover fire and earth. Rated T for violence.
1. First Spark

**A/N: Throughout the entire series, both the writers and Mako gloss over Mako and Bolin's past. But living on the street is a hundred times more terrible that the phrase makes it out to be. I'm not a homeless child, but I still understand that. And all you need are two things - logic and an imagination - to figure it out**.

~o0{}0o~

It was dark and damp under the dumpster, and the reek of mold and rotten food permeated every granule of the pavement. A young boy named Mako, almost nine years old, crouched under it with his chin and palms flat against the ground. He ignored the nuisance of his environment and tried to quiet his laboured breathing. The pounding of his heart, however, was something he could not quell, and he was sure that it would give him away at any moment.

He was waiting for the soles of a pair of dirty brown boots to appear on the ground next to the dumpster. Nothing came, but after a tense minute, the deep, harsh voice of a man punctured the air.

"Get back here, you little punk! No one insults Juano and gets away with it."

The boots appeared and scuffled back and forth in front of Mako's face.

"Where are you hiding?"

The boots walked away, and it was silent for a long moment. Mako could hear nothing but the faint background noise of traffic and everyday city life.

He was sure of the fact that his utter silence had saved him, until something hard and clawlike suddenly shackled his ankle in its grip and forcibly dragged him out. His chin, palms and the skin that was exposed through the holes and rips in his shirtfront stung as they scraped against the ground. He did his very best not to scream.

Once the man had pulled him fully out from under his shelter, Mako struggled to his feet and came face-to-face with a grimy mustache and beard sitting upon a cracked-lip scowl full of yellow teeth. The face moved downwards and revealed a sharp nose and a pair of hard, steely blue eyes, which happened to be focused directly on him.

"Well, well...look what the cat dragged in. A lil' street rat, fresh outta the sewers."

The man exhaled in Mako's face and Mako almost choked on the horrible stench. He backpedaled to get away from it, but regretted doing so immediately, as he was now backed in the corner between the brick wall and the dumpster, with the man blocking him. It was an awfully confining position.

He wasn't confined there for very long, though, because the man grabbed Mako by what was left of his shirt and lifted him high enough so that he couldn't run away. "Now, let's cut to the chase," he said. "Where's the money?"

"I don't have it," Mako stated.

"What did you say?"

"I...don't...have...it." Mako's face was utterly blank, his tone even. He was somewhat new to this business, but even he knew not to show fear. Fear was a sign of weakness to these people. It turned you into prey.

He did, however, pat his pant leg to make sure the warm, soft paper-wrapped mass he'd pocketed fifteen minutes ago was still there. It was.

"Where is it, then?" The gangster spat.

"I...lost it."

The man let go of Mako's shirt and slapped him hard across the face. Mako's head banged against the wall and an explosion of pain shot through his skull. For a few seconds he couldn't see or hear anything.

"You _liar."_

The man's snarl drilled nails in his head with each syllable.

"You stole it, didn' yah? Thought you'd just rake some off the top for yerself?"

Mako planted his hands and knees on the floor, trying to steady his head. His cheek stung badly from the blow, but the pain wasn't nearly as bad as the pain in his head. The gnawing hunger at the pit of his stomach didn't help, and nausea was quickly being added to the mix.

"No...I don hab it," he managed to say eventually. At the slurred sound of his own words, he rubbed his jaw to check if it had been broken again.

"That bundle was one thousand yuans short," the man continued, apparently unable to hear Mako. "Which was _all of it!_ You'd better cough it up, or else."

"I don't have it," Mako said for the fourth time. He knew that the gangster would never believe him if Mako told him the truth, that a thief had threatened to kill him and stolen the payoff just as he was on his way to deliver it to their boss.

In the short silence while Mako kneeled on the ground, waiting for his aching head to clear and his stomach to settle, a metaphorical lightbulb lit over his tormenter's head.

"Hey...you have a lil' kid brother, dontcha? And you guys live in that pathetic little card hut a block down, right? Maybe he's the way to get through to yah." The man smiled dangerously at Mako and then turned on his heel, taking off down the street.

It took a split second for Mako to understand, and when he did, the alarm was enough to propel him to his feet. He staggered down the street in the general direction of the shelter he and Bolin had made behind an apartment on the edge of the next block. He had only purpose in mind: protect Bolin. As he broke into a run, his head didn't clear, but he was able to focus enough to ignore most of the pain.

He turned left at the next corner. He thought he saw the back of the man's overcoat flapped past a fire escape in the opposite direction just as he did so, which confused Mako. He then tripped over a curb, or his own feet, he wasn't sure. But by the time he managed to pull himself up again, he knew it was too late.

What Mako was faced with when he finally caught up with the man was a scene out of a nightmare: he was standing several paces away from a cardboard packaging box that was most likely used to store furniture once upon a time, but was now was padded with old blankets inside and covered with oiled cloth on the top to prevent rain from seeping in; a box with the tips of a pair of muddy socks peaking out of the opening. The box in which Bolin was sleeping. And a gang member hovered over it, suspending a mob of glistening icicles in the air with one hand and aiming the sharp points at the exact spot where Bolin's head must be.

_He's a bender? A waterbender? _Mako's muddled brain thought, in a brief, insane burst. _Did I know that before?_

"D'ya know where the dough is _now_?" the man taunted.

"Don't you dare...hurt...Bo," Mako spat, struggling just to get the words out.

Mako could say nothing more. Along with his headache, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, and his anger and frustration at being so helpless, a strange tingling sensation was running its way through his body. It felt alive, almost electric. The more his anger intensified, the stronger the sensation became.

"Or else what?" When he got no reply, the gangster harrumphed and shrugged. "I guess we'll just have to tear yer _house_ apart an' find the cash, then."

Mako started running the instant before the man released his hold on the icicles.

He saw the next few moments in slow motion: the man grinning at him as the ice began to fly, and his own hand reaching towards the man's face, itching to claw it off, or just to stop him from hurting Bolin.

Then several things happened all at once and too quickly for Mako to make sense of. The sensation climaxed, shot up his right arm, and then dissipated. There was a roaring sound, followed by a sudden blast of heat, a splash, and then screaming. It was the man. The man was screaming shrill, agonized, screams, and clutching his own face. Mako didn't have time to search for the source of his distress because the man took one look at Mako, eyes widening through the gaps in between his fingers, and scrambled off, away from the two brothers and out of sight.

Once he was sure the man was gone, Mako sat down hard on the ground. It was over, for now. For now he could just let the tension flow out of him and give in to the oblivion inside his head.

He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there until he realized that there was a disturbance in the box; it was Bolin, probably woken by the man's shrieking. Bolin was an extremely heavy sleeper. He had to be, to be waking up this long after the actual event that woke him up. Mako crawled towards the opening of the box to check on his little brother.

Bolin was sitting up inside the box, his thin, raggedy blanket tangled around him and his eyes half-lidded. He sighed in relief. Bolin was fine. The box was soaked through with icy water, but Bolin was fine.

"I'm hungry." Bolin mumbled sleepily. "And it's cold in here. Did you find any food?"

"Yeah, I – I brought you dumplings." It took a considerable amount of time for him to remember where he'd put them. Yes - they were in his pocket, squished almost flat, and cold now. They rarely ever got warm food and he had meant to give it to Bolin as a treat, but he had wasted too much time with the gangster. So much for that. Still, Mako handed the paper bag to Bolin and Bolin tore into the dumplings ravenously.

"You...you didn't see any of that?" Mako asked carefully.

"Any of what?"

Mako sighed again. Bolin had been asleep the whole time. Even if nothing else had gone right for Mako today, at least he'd spared Bolin the sight of that terrifying scene.

"Any of what?" Bolin repeated, prodding his brother slightly.

Mako almost shook his head, but then stopped when pain shot through it at a slight jerk. He used his voice instead, saying, "Nothing. Never mind. Eat up. You need to keep your strength."

"You don't want any?"

"No, I'll just throw up."

"Why?"

Mako froze. From feeling nauseous, obviously, but why had he said that out loud? There must be something wrong with his brain. He touched his forehead and felt something hot and sticky smeared on it. Then his head started to feel even worse, if that was possible.

"Big bro?" Bolin said curiously. He looked more closely at Mako. "Big bro? What happened to your face?"

"Nothing," Mako said heavily. "Just a little accident. I'll be fine."

Then he blacked out and crumpled onto the ground.

~o0{}0o~


	2. Second Spark

The next few days were a foggy, confusing blur for Mako. Nothing made sense to him. Any kind of light, even the glow from the sun at dusk, was too bright and hurt his eyes. The bread Bolin had managed to scrape up for them tasted like soggy cardboard instead of bread, and he slept at irregular intervals throughout the day and night, plagued with bizarre dreams.

Somewhere in the haze, he vaguely remembered telling Bolin that they had to move somewhere else. He didn't remember what he'd offered up as a reason, but he did remember insisting over and over that they move to another part of the city. And they must have done so, because one day, while Mako was experiencing what felt like the longest period of lucidity he'd had in a long time, he realized that the dust and stale air around him was irritating his nose. Subsequently came the realization that he was now sleeping in some kind of broken-down warehouse instead of a furniture box, and that Bolin had probably been trying with great difficulty to take care of him this whole time. It was usually Mako who acted as the surrogate parent.

An indeterminate length of time passed before Mako was able to function normally again, and it took longer still until he could remember clearly what had happened that day before the fog began.

He was helped along in this recall by Bolin, who returned one day from an evening spent foraging for food in the nearest alleyways with a can of collected rainwater in one hand and a greasy paper bag filled with four dumplings in the other. Two of the dumplings had already been chomped on by someone else.

"Look what I found in the trash can outside. It's almost fresh!" Bolin exclaimed. "They're the same kind you got for me that day you fainted."

Mako sniffed the dumplings, and was about to say "I fainted?" when the familiar scent triggered something in his mind, and the memories came rushing back to him as if flooding out of an open door. The surprise attack by a mysterious thief on the streets, as he was on his way to the gang's hideout to deliver the payoff to the boss, and realizing that the money was missing afterwards. The few stray yuans dropped by the thief, which he had discovered caught in a drain the next day, and used to buy dumplings for Bolin. Being ambushed again and chased by one of the boss's henchmen. The henchman hauling him out from under the dumpster. Running through the streets in a painful haze. Seeing a waterbender leveling knives of ice at a clueless Bolin.

And the most mind-boggling of it all: the strange sensation in his arm that had somehow damaged the waterbender's face so severely that he had scampered away in fear. As Bolin chattered happily to him over their meagre meal of stale leftovers, Mako puzzled over what the sensation could have been. He couldn't think of anything that made sense, so he decided that maybe it hadn't been real. Maybe the whole thing had been a hallucination brought on by his head injury. Maybe the entire _day_ had been a crazy dream he'd experienced after tripping and hitting his head somewhere. Those, to him, were logical explanations. But the more he thought about it, the less any of those conclusions felt right to him. It had felt all too real to be a hallucination or a dream.

So that night, while Bolin was fast asleep, Mako searched for that strange sensation again. After several minutes of stillness and controlled breathing, he found it hiding at the pit of his somewhat-satisfied stomach, and tried to coax it up into his arm.

Nothing happened.

The next night he tried it again with the breathing exercise. And the next. Each time he was able to force it further and further down his arm, and one night, while in the middle of one of these sessions, he heard Bolin cry out in his sleep, pleading and begging with someone or something that Mako couldn't see. Mako shook him a little, saying, "Bolin? Bo? Are you alright?"

Bolin didn't answer, and he didn't wake up. From the words that tumbled from his mouth, Mako guessed that Bolin was in the midst of a nightmare about their parents. He felt a strong surge of empathy and affection for his brother.

And that was when the unusual sensation finally moved up, up into his shoulder, and then down his arm. When it reached the end of his fingers, a whooshing sound and a flicker of orange light cut through the quiet blackness.

Mako stared at it to figure out if his eyes were deceiving him. The light left impressions in his eyes that he could see when he blinked, and he decided that the problem lay elsewhere. He waved his hand around in the dark, and the flame followed it, dancing and swaying. He could feel it pulsing somehow, as if it was alive, or as if it was mimicking his heartbeat.

It had to be real. After spending so much time travelling in between the realms of being asleep and being awake, he always knew exactly which side of the border he was on.

_Oh, no, _he thought in horror, gaping at his hand as if it had just morphed into a giant wolfbat. _I'm a firebender. Just like the monster who killed Mom and Dad._

He closed his hand on the flame and it extinguished. He decided that he would not tell Bolin about this; he couldn't stand the thought of his brother knowing about the connection Mako had with the murderer of their parents. What if he turned out just like that mugger? What if his power gradually changed him into a heartless, savage killer from the inside out?

No, that wasn't going to happen - he wouldn't _let it_ happen. He would never firebend again.

And true to his own words to himself, he didn't say a word to Bolin about it. Days, then weeks passed after he made the discovery of his powers, and Bolin still had no idea. Mako refused himself the use of his ability in even the smallest magnitude. Only once or twice, frustrated over a pile of damp newspaper, had he given in and shot a tiny spark out of his fingertips to light a fire for warmth, but that was the limit of his tolerance for his own weakness. He only used his fire when it was absolutely necessary for their survival.

Spring was cold and wet that year, and water poured from the sky as if the sky was an erratic floodgate. Mako thought that he had to only hold out until summer came. After that he would never use fire again, and Bolin would never know.

Or so Mako told himself. But it was one of those exact slip-ups that cost him his secret one day when he was out with his brother on a trek to find more food. They had found half of a raw river fish outside the back door of a restaurant, and Mako was attempting to light a fire inside a tin canister and cook it as quickly as possible, while Bolin took a washroom break. He and Bolin were starving, weak with hunger, and he didn't want to give the fish time to get any more rotten than it already was.

However, after multiple failures with two pieces of spark stone they'd brought along with them on their trip, he gave up and set a pinprick of flame from his index and middle fingers into the canister. The pinprick kindled and slowly grew into a crackling fire.

"What was that?" a voice from behind him said suddenly.

Mako jumped and swiveled his head around. When he saw who it was, he relaxed slightly, but scolded, "Bo! Don't sneak up on me like that!"

"But I just watched you light a fire out of nowhere."

_Uh-oh_, Mako thought. What he said was: "No, you didn't. I used a match. You couldn't see it because it was hidden in my hand."

"Where did you get a match?"

"I...found it."

"Where?"

"In the garbage."

Bolin scrunched up his eyes at Mako. It was certainly possible to find a stray match in the garbage, but Bolin knew what he saw Mako do. "You're lying," Bolin said accusingly. "I can tell."

Mako could think of no reply. With all the foul language he'd learned from his time working for a gang, Mako cursed silently at himself, and at the cheap, useless spark stones that only seemed to work when Bolin used them.

Then the truth dawned on Bolin. "Hey...you're a firebender, aren't you?" he said, with a touch of awe. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Mako sighed and closed his eyes. "Because. It's not important."

"What do you mean? It's useful! You can use it for stuff!"

"Oh, yeah? Like what?"

"For lots of things. Like street tricks! You can do street tricks with it! You can teach a mouse to jump through a ring of fire! And you can use it for stuff like – like - "

"Like killing people?" Mako shot a look at his brother that was filled with hatred. Although, it wasn't Bolin that he hated, not at all.

"Huh?" said Bolin, confused.

"Firebenders are evil," Mako snapped. "Mom and Dad were killed by a firebender. Firebenders started the Hundred-Year-War and hurt and killed more people than you can imagine."

It took a moment for Bolin to let this sink in.

Meanwhile, Mako was still going on about the hazards of fire.

"A firebender," he said bitterly, "is the reason we have to live in the basement of an old warehouse, hungry all the time and freezing our toes off. Fire destroys things. It destroyed our family. All it does is destroy and destroy. It can burn people. It's dangerous. It's evil - "

"But - Mako - _you're_ not evil," Bolin reasoned, with the simple, innocent logic that seven-year-olds possessed in abundance. "You don't hurt people. You protect me."

Mako stopped ranting for a moment and stared at his little brother.

He _had_ hurt someone. But...it had been in the defense of a third person. Bolin. And he had done it without even knowing.

He wasn't evil.

He wasn't his parents' murderer, and he wasn't Fire Lord Ozai.

All he wanted was to keep the two of them safe and alive.

Bolin took his brother's sudden change of expression as an invitation to keep talking. "Hey, Mako...if it wasn't for the Hundred-Year-War, do you think Avatar Aang and Fire Lord Zuko would still have built Republic City?" It was an honest question.

Mako looked around them, still thinking. There was the harbour, with its deep blue waters that sparkled in the sunset. He had run past it earlier that day without really noticing. And in the center of the harbour, the great stone statue of Avatar Aang rose triumphantly from the horizon. Sometimes, during a certain time of year and from a certain place in the city, the rising sun would be positioned in such a way as to appear as if the Avatar was balancing it on the end of his staff. And all around them, the city's skyscrapers loomed overhead like giant pillars reaching towards the heavens.

He had seen some of the worst of the city's underbelly, so it was often easy to forget how the place could be beautiful as well as terrifying.

"No," Mako answered finally. "I don't think so."

"So are you going to keep bending fire then? And are you going to learn how to do it better?"

"Maybe...I don't know. Look, the fish is burning."

He refused to talk about it any more. They ate their dinner of burnt fish in silence, using their fingers to pick what good meat they could find off the bones, while Mako weighed his own convictions and his brother's words against each other in his head.

"It's night time already," Bolin remarked worriedly later on, as they were about to make their way back to the warehouse. His face pinched up. "I'm scared. I don't like being out in the alleys at night. Unless I'm under a nice safe blanket. How will we get back to our blanket?"

Mako glanced at his little brother's fearful expression, and then at his right hand, which he had unconsciously curled into a fist during his little mental battle with himself. And he made a decision, right there and then.

"I don't think that will be any trouble for us," he said.

Bolin peered at his brother through the darkness. Mako was holding out his opened fist with the palm facing up. In the center of it, a flame blossomed, and began to grow until it fully illuminated the alleyway ahead of them.

~o0{}0o~

**A/N:**

Thanks for reading, and I hoped you enjoyed that. It's the end of Mako's side of the story, but next is probably Bolin's, and then perhaps Asami's.

As always, reviews are much appreciated as well, especially with constructive criticism. I would take a constructively critical review over a favourite any day of the week.

See you later. :)

~Vina


	3. First Stone

**A/N:**

After sitting on this chapter for several weeks, I decided to just swallow my doubt and post what I had. I'm sorry for the long gap, but I was unsure as to what the right method of approach should be.

Some of the material in this chapter was inspired by the wonderful tumblr _Fire Ferrets Press Conference_, where hilarity and in-character-ness abound. So thanks to the writers of that blog, whoever they might be.

.  
~o0{}0o~  
.

_"You have to fill yourself with a strong emotion – you know, like anger - and let the...the energy just - move through you. There's a little thing like a well inside me that I tap into. Anyway, then you tell it to flow into your arm, and then your hand, and then your palm, and then you just let it flow out. It's like a little drum beating in your hand, except it's alive."_

Bolin recited the exact words his brother had told him, over and over again, and tried to figure out if there was something he'd forgotten. Some little detail that would make it all click and allow him to start firebending miraculously. But each time he repeated it to himself, the nagging feeling that he had missed something grew stronger.

He glared at his palm, as if by sheer force of will he could make flames appear. Frustrated, he grabbed a handful of dry rubble and threw it at the nearest wall.

It was impossible. He couldn't make himself angry at will. The only time he ever made fire was when he knocked two spark stones together, and that was only because, for some reason, Mako had never been able to get them to work.

So maybe he couldn't bend. He might just be a plain old non-bender like both his parents had been.

_But I won't be useless,_ he thought. _I'll stick by Mako always. I'll be his rock._

It was nice in this basement. When he made himself forget how freezing, dusty, and bug-infested it was, he could appreciate the ambiance. Quiet, coolness, and under the layer of rubble there was a trove of fine, soft earth. The earth was always there, stable, constant, supporting everyone, supporting all life.

When the silence was this absolute, he sometimes thought he could hear something speaking to him. Something that wasn't a person, something that was a sound that was not a sound. It was a something he had heard many times before but had never been able to unmask the source of. It never came from his ears. In fact, on this occasion, it seemed to be coming from the soles of his feet.

Bolin held himself absolutely still, breathing in small, shallow gasps, and closed his eyes, listening intently. Whatever it was saying, it seemed to be growing stronger. And it wasn't a language of words, but rather of sensations and memories. Memories of what, however, he wasn't sure.

Bolin thought he could hear something for real now, with his ears. A voice was ringing faintly through the warehouse. As it continued to speak, it grew louder, and Bolin could make out what it was saying.

"Bolin! I'm back! I brought some food. Bolin? Where are you?"

"In the cellar!" Bolin called back.

"Well, get out of there! It's cold and filthy - "

Mako stomped down the stairs and into view. He held copies of newspapers that were a few days old, and two bowls of street gruel. With his hair ruffled and his disheveled, dirty clothing, though, he looked like a skinny and fragile little boy, not a recent initiate of a notorious bending gang, or Bolin's big brother and surrogate parent. Mako had joined the Triple Threat Triad recently, a gang with experienced firebenders, and since then his abilities had skyrocketed. Bolin had always known his brother would be a fast learner.

Although Mako would never admit it, Bolin knew he also had nightmares about their parents. He probably experienced them constantly, and his had to be worse than Bolin's, because he had actually seen it happen. On that fateful day almost a year ago, Mako had been fiercely covering Bolin's eyes with his hands while watching their parents struggling to fight and defend themselves, clutching their father's scarf to his chest, and trying to stifle his own sobbing. To save Bolin the pain, he had always refused to detail the incident to him. Even then Mako had been leaving the burden all to himself.

Both battles had turned out to be rather futile.

"Big bro? What happened to your..." Bolin pointed to the left side of Mako's face. The swollen skin around his eye was the color of a plum. Mako opened his mouth, about to speak, but Bolin cut him off, anticipating the answer. "And don't say nothing! You always say 'nothing.'"

Mako looked uncomfortable. "I got into a fight," he said reluctantly.

"Why?"

"The gang leader made me do it. I had to fight another boy for the money I was supposed to get, because I refused to do something for them. "

He turned away and headed towards two rickety stools and the pile of magazines the two of them used as a dining table. Bolin knew it would be useless to press him for any more details, so instead he asked the obvious question: "Did you win?"

Mako held up his bounty of handmade street gruel as an answer.

Bolin's face fell. "Oh."

"Don't worry about me, Bo." He changed the subject. "Hey, look. Can you read any of these words?"

Bolin craned his head over and scanned the headline of the article Mako was holding out.

"Earthbending...South...Avatar..." He scrunched up his face, confused. "People are earthbending the south Avatar?"

Mako laughed. "No, it says, '_Royal Earthbending Master Arrives at South Pole, Avatar Begins Training_." He touched each word with his index finger as he read.

"I thought there was only one Avatar."

"There _is _only one, Bo. She's some Water Tribe girl from the South Pole."

"Oh." Bolin sighed dreamily. "I bet she's really cool. Bending all four elements..." Bolin couldn't even bend one of them.

Mako shook his head. "Cool? I doubt it. She's probably some spoiled brat who's always had everything given to her on a silver platter." It was a phrase that Shady Shin had used to deride the rich girl whom he had stolen from earlier that week. Even if Mako hadn't participated in the theft, he couldn't forget the time when the girl had turned her nose up and sneered at the sight of him; it had been justification enough for him to not be bothered by the crime.

"What does that mean?" Bolin asked.

"Nothing."

"I bet you would like her though. I bet you would like the Avatar."

Mako scoffed his disagreement.

"Anyway, just keep trying," he said, getting back on topic. "I'll teach you as much as I can. You'll get the hang of it eventually."

Bolin pouted. "I know, but, it's so hard."

Mako patted him affectionately on the head and began to set out their lunch. "We have to learn to read," he said firmly. "And add and subtract. It's bad enough we live in an old cellar and have no parents."

He had always been blunt like that. Protective, but blunt, and not willing to sugarcoat things.

"Can you read the whole article?" Bolin asked, referring back to the newspaper.

"Most of it. Enough to understand the message."

As they ate, Mako described his jobs with the Triple T's and the firebending lessons they gave him to supplement his self-teaching. Lightening-bending was the main topic of interest. Shock and awe, he said. It was the most amazing thing he'd ever seen. He couldn't wait unti he could learn the technique, although it would probably be a couple years ahead for him.

"I'm still hungry," Bolin mumbled, once Mako was finished. "This tastes even more yucky than the last one you got me. And the last bowl you brought me made me really sick."

Mako seemed disgruntled. "That's the best I can do right now. Sorry but you'll just have to deal with it."

"Will this one make me sick too?"

"No."

Bolin looked at the tiny heap of flavorless tofu at the bottom of his bowl. He knew they couldn't afford to be picky, but he still hated tofu. "I'm going to look for more food outside. Okay?"

He got up, taking the bowl and the back page of Mako's newspaper with him.

Mako's eyes followed him on his way out. "Do you need me to go with you?" he asked.

"No, it's okay."

"Be careful. Don't talk to anyone. Don't eat anything that looks spoiled or moldy. Don't - "

"Okay, I got it. Bye!"

.

~o0{}0o~

.

Bolin couldn't find anything. He'd walked out to the back alleys of the nearest residential block, and had been searching for at least twenty minutes, and his stomach was growling even worse now. He looked forlornly at the tofu in his bowl, which was now slightly dry and rough on the surface, and was about to give in and eat it, when he noticed something in his peripheral vision.

Something long, furry, and auburn was sticking out of a fallen trash can. First its head peeked out of the rim of the trash can, followed by its front paws, and then its torso and its back legs.

It was a creature Bolin had never seen before. It was muddy, but underneath the mud Bolin could see that it looked like a miniature red panda, with the size and shape of a squirrel-rat. It leaped and bounced around on all floors, scavenging for food.

"Hey there, little fella," Bolin said.

The creature's ears perked up, and it turned Bolin, studying the huge stranger with an inquisitive tilt to its head.

Bolin picked the chunks of tofu out of his bowl and dropped it into his palm. He approached the little critter slowly, and bent over, offering it the palm.

The creature looked at him curiously, but after some sniffing, took an experimental lick.

"My name's Bolin," he said. "What's yours?"

The creature chattered his indecipherable reply.

"I know! I'll give you a name."

He pulled out the newspaper article he had stuffed into his pants earlier, and picked out two random characters from a caption of a circus photograph. If it was next to a picture of animals, it must contain an animal name, or so his thought process went.

While the creature ate out of his left hand, he used his right hand to copy out the word. Stroke by stroke, he etched the characters into the ground.

The critter slurped up the last of his meal as Bolin put the finishing touches on his work. Sniffing around for more food, the creature climbed up Bolin's arm and onto his shoulders, nearly causing him to ruin his work.

Bolin giggled. "That tickles!" The creature continued to scurry all over him.

By this time it was getting late, and Bolin knew Mako was probably searching for him. Sure enough, after a few minutes he heard footsteps, and a head of messy dark hair poked itself around the next corner.

Bolin stood up and called out to his brother. "Mako! Big bro! Can you come and read something for me?" He bounced up and down with excitement.

"Read something?"

Bolin pointed at the ground. "I wrote it all by myself!"

When he came close enough to, Mako followed the direction of Bolin's fingers and saw the disturbed asphalt. "How did you do that?" he asked, eyes wide.

"Do what?"

"Write that in the ground."

Before Bolin could answer, Mako bent over the engraving and read, "Pah...boo. Pabu?"

Bolin bowed his head, and said to his shoulder, "Pabu! Do you like it?"

Pabu squeaked loudly, poking his head out of Bolin's shirt.

"Okay! Your name is Pabu."

Mako yelped, and backpedaled into a brick wall. "What is that!"

"Huh?"

"Bolin," he began incredulously, "Why do you have a fire ferret in your shirt?"

"A what?"

"You know what I'm talking about! That animal in your shirt!"

"He's called a fire ferret?"

"Yeah, but - that's not the point. Where'd you get it?"

"I found him looking for food around here. He's got no family to take care of him, just like us."

"You can't be saying..."

"Can we keep him?"

"_No!_"

"Pleeaaase?"

Mako let out a long-suffering groan. "Bolin, we don't need another mouth to feed..."

"Pleeaaase?"

"Bo..."

"I'll take care of him myself! I promise. Pleeaaase can we keep him? Pleeaaase?"

Bolin put on his best wide-eyed begging face. He was afraid Mako would say no, but instead Mako spluttered, "Fine," and made to leave. He spun around at the last second to point a finger at his brother and say, "But if he ever chews on my scarf, I'm feeding him to the Triad's gopherbear!"

That face always worked on Mako.

Bolin cried out in joy and spun the ferret around in a circle, to the creature's own squeaking indignation.

"I promise he won't!"

"Sure," Mako grumbled. "Are you coming back with me?"

"Yeah, okay!" Bolin scooped up his new friend in his arms, and followed behind Mako. Quietly he exclaimed, "Let's build you a fort!"

.

~o0{}0o~

.

He didn't build Pabu a fort.

He built Pabu a castle.

In a corner of the warehouse's ground level, Bolin pushed a misshapen mound of dirt to the base of one wall. There were sharp bits of rock and glass and other strange things he couldn't put a name to that cut into his hands.

"Stupid dirt," he said.

Mako must have gone to sleep, because once again it was dead silent in their makeshift home, and Bolin could hear those voices through his feet again. He sank his hands into the rubble and listened, trying to make out words.

_Will you let me play with you? _He asked.

It murmured incoherent sounds and sensations to him in reply.

He kindly requested that it take on the shape of a circle. It responded ever so eloquently to the gestures and movements of his hands and his arms, and he was so absorbed in his play that no suspicion ever crossed his mind.

Bolin had never felt so _right _before. As he molded the soft, grainy and slightly damp earth with his fingers, his castle began to come into shape. It was crude and simple, with four square 'rooms' surrounding a cylindrical tower, but in his mind it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

Bolin didn't know how much time had passed by the time he was finished, but it had apparently been long enough for Mako to take a nap, because when Bolin stood in front of his completed project with his hands on his hips and a huge grin on his face, Mako was coming up next to him, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

"You made that?" he asked.

"Yep!" Bolin chirped proudly.

"How?" There was no way it could have been done with two bare hands.

"I talked to the earth and it listened!"

"You...what?"

"I told you. The earth listened to me and moved for me."

Mako was wide awake now. "You mean...you_ bent _it? You _bent the earth_?"

There was a long moment of flabbergasted silence as the two brothers stared at each other.

"You're an earthbender," Mako said, at the same time Bolin said, "I'm an earthbender?"

"Try it! Move that rock over there."

Bolin focused on the ground beneath his feet and tried to reach the rock Mako was pointing to, tried to speak to it.

"I can't do it."

"Try again! Do_ exactly_ what you did before."

"Okay, just wait." Bolin kneeled over with his hands planted firmly on the ground, looking for the place where he had been while he was shaping his castle. He thought, _up, up, _and tried to imagine flying. When he opened his eyes, the stone was levitating at waist height above the ground.

Mako beamed.

.

~o0{}0o~

.

Bolin and Mako experimented with Bolin's new-found powers for hours, trying to make out its limits. Bolin felt as if a new door - or rather, a door that had always been there unnoticed - had been opened in his mind. Using his bending tired him out easily, though, and between practise sessions, the two brothers rested, watched Pabu jump around his castle, and talked about what this might mean for them: that if Bolin refined his abilities more, he could get a job using them, and earn them some more money. Bolin wanted to join the Triple Threats and work alongside Mako, but that was an argument that would take more than a pout and some begging to win.

"The only thing I can't figure out," Mako said thoughtfully, as they laid on their backs and stared up at the ceiling, "is how you can be an earthbender when neither Mom or Dad were earthbenders."

"But...they weren't firebenders either."

"That's true," he mused. "No, but Grandma was one. Dad told me."

"I think Gramps was an earthbender. He was always picking up rocks from the street and filling his shirt with them. I was really little but I still remember he liked to do that a lot."

"Yeah...I remember that too."

"Mako?"

"Yeah?"

"Why did the spirits decide to give us powers but not Mom and Dad?"

Mako knew what his brother was really thinking: If their parents had been benders, there would be a much greater chance they'd still be alive right now.

"Don't ask me that. I don't believe in that spirits mumbojumbo, Bo."

"Maybe we're supposed to use them for something big. Like helping someone save the world."

Mako shook his head disapprovingly. His brother's naïve idealism could get so overblown sometimes.

.

~o0{**The End?**}0o~

.

**A/N:**

The language of the world of LoK seems to be Chinese, (which makes some sense, given that they live in a sort of AU-steampunk-Shanghai). In the Chinese language – or at least in the Mandarin dialect, I don't know any Cantonese - there is a word, and therefore a character, that sounds like 'pah,' which is fairly close to the 'paw' in Pabu. There is also a word that sounds like 'boo.' I'm no expert, but I think that putting the two together can make a phrase in that means "does not crawl." Hmm.

Well...I'm sorry if it's bad, but I tried. :J See y'all around.

~Vina


End file.
